THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

After many, many GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare and sponsoring the most specious case the Supreme Court has ever entertained to try and kill it, the Republicans are facing the possibility of much of their base losing the health insurance they could finally afford. To deal with this potential disaster the Republicans are falling back on their tried and true response, lie like Hell and blame the Democrats. And they are grooming their media poodles to spread the lies.

The idea of Republicans blaming Democrats for millions losing subsidies would, in a way, be the perfect coda to the up-is-down, Conservative Entertainment Complex Hall of Mirrors saga that is King v. Burwell. Republicans cheered on this lawsuit explicitly as a way to accomplish what they failed to accomplish through the legislative and electoral process. The current plans for a temporary extension of subsidies that Republicans are floating would also repeal the individual mandate, and thus appear less designed as an actual fix, and more about drawing an Obama veto for the blame-game that will follow.

Meanwhile, Republicans have voted countless times to repeal all of Obamacare for all of its beneficiaries. Democrats will highlight this, and also draw attention to how easy it would be for Republicans to pass a simple one sentence fix that would make the subsidy problem disappear for millions of their own constituents — if they wanted to. Republicans themselves are saying they must come up with a temporary fix plan — or, at least, that they must appear to want to do that. Yet it’s not clear whether Republicans can pass even a fix packaged with a repeal of the mandate, let alone a clean temporary extension of subsidies.

That may ultimately compel Republicans to try for a Plan B. As I noted yesterday, the GOP default plan may be to pass nothing, and blame Obama for creating a law that resulted in the Court gutting health coverage for millions, after lulling all those people into a false sense of economic security that was then snatched away by his incompetence.

It’s possible we may see that in multiple Senate races as well. Are Democrats prepared for this?

How can one tell if the Democrats are prepared if the media will be buying the bullshit and running from the truth?